Microsoft retires support for various older products in 2014 and 2015. This means there will be no more free updates or security patches. While it’s a common occurrence to see support for older products retired by software vendors, it’s annoying if either the old stuff is still running perfectly well or if the upgrade option is financially onerous, will significantly disrupt the business or offers little in the way of real added benefit.

So in April we’ll be finally bidding farewell to support for the likes of Windows XP, Office 2003, Exchange Server 2003, and in July 2015 we’ll say adieu to support for Windows Server 2003. In addition, some more recent products will be transitioning to extended support in July 2014 - namely SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 – which puts them next on the path to software heaven.

Windows XP

On April 8, 2014, Windows XP will reach the end of its support lifecycle and Microsoft will no longer provide security or online updates.

Office 2003

As a part of the Microsoft Support Lifecycle Policy, Office 2003 products receive five years of Mainstream Support and five years of Extended Support. April 8, 2014 marks the end of this 10-year support period. Running Office 2003 after the end-of-support date may expose your company to security risks and technology limitations.

Exchange Server 2003
While Exchange Server 2003 was a leader in the messaging space, after 10 years of technology progression it will reach End of Support effective April 8, 2014.

Does your organization still have a significant number of endpoints still running Windows XP? Don’t worry, you’re not alone: Forrester's Forrsights Hardware Survey, Q3 2013 shows that the average organization still has 20% of their employee endpoints running XP. Considering that most organizations spend 18 to 32 months when migrating to newer versions of Windows, many organizations will likely find themselves scrambling to batten down the hatches before Microsoft’s April 8, 2014 end-of-life deadline.

After this date, Microsoft will stop releasing security patches for the 13-year-old operating system, a terrifying situation for organizations still relying on XP. What can you do as an organization if you still have a substantial XP presence within your environment? You can:

Migrate to Windows 7 or 8 posthaste. Microsoft has come a long way in preventing certain classes of attacks, such as bootkit and rootkit attacks. In fact, Microsoft has told us that Windows XP is 21 times more likely to get infected with malware than Windows 8.1. To help our clients understand the pros and cons of Windows 8.1 security, I recently published a guide on this very topic.

Buy some extra time. For those that can afford it, Microsoft will offer “custom support” in the form of XP security patches past the April 8 deadline. I’ve spoken with a number of organizations that determined that it would be cheaper to pay this premium than to migrate away from XP. Of course, this is just prolonging the inevitable; custom support will not be available forever.